LONDON, Nov 10 (KUNA) — The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday.
The whistleblower claims the agency has been “deliberately underplaying” a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.
In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83 million barrels a day to 105 million barrels.
External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.
Now the “peak oil” theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment, the publication said.
“The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry.
“The 120 million figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this. Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further,” he said.
“And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.
A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted.
“We have already entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.
The British government, among others, always uses IEA statistics rather than any of its own to argue that there is little threat to long-term oil supplies.
The IEA said today that peak oil critics had often wrongly questioned the accuracy of its figures.
A spokesman said it was unable to comment ahead of the 2009 report being released tomorrow.
The IEA was established in 1974 after the oil crisis in an attempt to try to safeguard energy supplies to the west.
The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections
